Marketing and Management Thoughts

Churches, and every non-profit, can always use stuff for free. With that in mind I knew I had to re-post this from swissmiss earlier today. There seem to be some great free sites listed so check it out!

55 Great Websites To Download Free Sound Effects

Note: Some of these sound effects have limited rights. That means they are not allowed for commercial usage. We urge that you check the rights before using them for business purposes.

HatNod (swissmiss)

This video has just astounded me by the brilliant colors and how well the kaleidoscope effect worked. If you have ever been to a fair/carnival after dark you gotta check out this video. It’s a bit long, but just visually stunning.

Imagine asking someone in your church to make a promo video for a church night out and getting this back. I love it (though I do realize it’s a bit abstract and flashy for some tastes/settings).

Visual by: Sai
Music by: Wanderlust -Björk (Ratatat Remix)

hat not (Fubiz)

Following up our post on the Evolution of Video is this 4 minute video (by MadV)  that uses a communities response to a video to form this compilation of hope. I found it very inspiring, I also tried to find the original video clip but it was taken offline for some reason (likely when the owners account was hacked last week).

While there is a lower production value due to the heavy use of web-cams, the impact more than outweighs that drawback in my opinion. Your thoughts?

Clive Thompson wrote an interesting piece on how YouTube is changing the way we use video/film in our society. While the majority of his argument stems from the

It isn’t quite a documentary; it isn’t exactly a conversation or a commentary, either. It’s some curious mongrel form. And it would have been inconceivable before the Internet and cheap webcams—prohibitively expensive and difficult to pull off.

This is what’s so fascinating about online video culture. DIY tools for shooting, editing, and broadcasting video aren’t just changing who uses the medium. They’re changing how we use it. We’re developing a new language of video—forms that let us say different things and maybe even think in different ways.

With over 100 years of the moving picture and we have still be drastically limited in how we use the medium do to cost and time restraints. Over just the past 10 years have peoples home computers been powerful enough to edit their videos on par with the pros, and costs have come down drastically since then.

(more…)

My heart for media and the web started in Video back in 1999. While I understand this is an expensive area for churches to get into, and the number of churches able to afford live broadcast production tech is even slimmer, it is still awesome to check out.

I came across the NewTek Tricaster (cost is $5000) on the wired blog and its claim to fame is that it can take a whole production truck and compact it down into one box. That’s it. The interface looks super intuitive and easy to use (the wired blog mentioned training in of volunteers in as little as 30 minutes).

Form factor is very small and would easily fit in a rack mount somewhere near the audio equipment for the church. It does real-time chroma keying, lower thirds, and so on. Also with a $1000 attachment you can do slow-mo (the action sports videographer in me just jumped a little bit). Imagine preaching with slow-mo instant replays!

I would have loved to have one of these back in the day when I ran the Midwest Skier Open every year. Probably could have gotten red bull to go in on the jumbo tron then. If only…

Never hurts to dream… Just sometimes keeps me from the work I should be doing.

http://www.nineteen05.com/media/feed/motion/2008/12/Sequence-01.flv

It’s hard to believe that Christmas is upon us once again. There is snow on the ground here in Minneapolis and it will be a white Christmas this year. In case you have yet to set your tree up this year (there are only 13 days left till Christmas so get on it!!).

From us here at Nineteen05 we wish you the merriest of Christmas’ you’ve ever had, and the peace & joy of Christ in this holiday season.

It’s important in any line of work (professional or hobby) to keep tabs on what others are doing. I follow all these blogs (and then some) to keep my eyes sharp and my mind inspired in the realm of design. If you aren’t currently using a feed aggregator like Google Reader you should really start (lets you keep up with news/blog updates all in one place). Subscribe to our blog, and the blogs listed below.

6 Blogs You’ve Gotta Read

1. Swiss Miss - General Design (http://swissmiss.typepad.com/weblog/)
   Tina Roth Eisenberg keeps this blog packed full of great design work on a daily basis.
2. notcot - General Design (http://www.notcot.com/)
   Kept up by a teamof bloggers who post about all things design. Worth checking out (and they are doing christmas product give aways right now, and it’s free to enter!).
3. Brand New - Brand/Identity (http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/)
   A beautiful blog when it comes to brand identities. They focus mainly on re-branding of large brands (like Pepsi, Delta, banks, ect). The insights shared on the new brands are really helpful to start/continue forming an eye for identify/brand development.
4. Fubiz - Video/Motion Design (http://www.fubiz.net/blog/)
   Most of what they post at Fubiz involves motion art. These videos are really well done and an inspiration to the multi-media designer inside me. I do realize this site is in french, but they post such visually stunning work (much of which is actually in English).
5. TypeNEU - Type Design (http://www.typeneu.com/)
   Type faces are gorgeous. The right type face changes everything. The days of papyrus and comic sans are long gone. This blog will help you realize the current trends in fonts, and gain an appreciation for this, all to often, overlooked art of typeface design.
6. I Love Typography - Type Design (http://ilovetypography.com/)
   Similar to TypeNEU, focuses on typography and has a lot of stunning content for inspiration.

Still not enough designy goodness?

Below are even more blogs to check out.

• http://www.productdose.com/
• http://www.oberholtzer-creative.com/visualculture/
• http://www.designspotter.com/
• http://designnotes.info/
• http://mocoloco.com/

In terms of building community this is probably the least effective method of those listed in the original post for the series. I make this statement because the main purpose of these sites is entertainment. For this purpose I’m going to break this down into three sections; Promotional Videos, Follow-up Videos, and Documentaries.

I would first post all of these video on your churches website for your members before heading over to a site like You Tube. If you’re interested in posting to multiple video sharing sites at once check out our post on tube mogul. (more…)

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/movies/UrsusWehrli_2006-embed_high.flv

Ursus Wehrli shares from his recent book Tidying Up Art in this fun video from the TED confence in 2006. It’s worth a the 15 minutes to watch and enjoy.

There are a whole number of websites out there to post your videos to and why wouldn’t you with all the time that goes into making each one. The problem is that it takes so long to publish your video on each of them. This is where Tube Mogul comes in. It’s one website that allows you to upload your video files one, and publish them to over 20 video sharing website out there today (supported sites).

This service makes content re-purposing  that much easier to accomplish by allowing you access to quickly upload a video to multiple sites at once. On top of that they provide you with detailed statistics on how each video is doing on various sites (see image from their site to the right).

If you are doing a lot of promotional video work, or just creating videos that you want to get out there in front of the world I would encourage you to sign up and try out TubeMogul.com.